Nick in the AM: Cyd's-Park District sounds like perfect public-private partnership

Thursday

Nov 30, 2017 at 7:28 AMNov 30, 2017 at 8:06 AM

Nick Vlahos Journal Star reporter @vlahosnick

(NOTE: Another week, another vacation for Nick in the Morning. What, you think slaving over a hot keyboard is easy? We'll be back first thing Tuesday. Please miss us. We'll miss you.)

Good morning, troops. It's Thursday, Nov. 30.

Additional details emerged Wednesday night regarding the proposed relocation of Cyd's Gourmet Kitchen to the former golf clubhouse at Donovan Park. It's across Knoxville Avenue from the restaurant and catering business' current location, in Junction City shopping center.

Nick in the Morning tends to be skeptical of anything the Peoria Park District proposes, including its use of the Donovan site the past few years. But if everything is as it appears at this juncture, this merger of public and private interests looks promising.

Let's preface this by saying we were devastated when Donovan Golf Course closed. That was our home course. Over the decades, we played there at least 150 times, probably. We played well there maybe three or four times, but that's beside the point.

The course opened during the Great Depression and was a gem in the heart of the city. But declining play and a Park District deficit doomed it.

(Of course, the Donovan closure came about the same time the Park District committed to spend almost $1 million to renovate Kellogg Golf Course — to little obvious difference, according to this duffer. Seems like that money could have been better spent throughout the district's golf system instead of trying and failing to match the Lick Creeks and Metamora Fields of this area.)

For the past three years or so, Donovan has been fallow, almost is if it's been allowed to return to nature. We've encountered few others on our occasional visits there. The district apparently didn't have the money to do much with the property, nor an obvious plan.

Creative thinking and changes in district leadership might have helped bring forth what appears to be a truly inspired idea.

Cyd's is assuming most of the risk here, Nick in the Morning is told. It's responsible for clubhouse renovations, which are to remain if Cyd's decides to depart at some point. And it will offer the city a new property-tax source.

Unlike some well-known regional restaurant chains that want to open outlets in Peoria, no extra sales tax is planned to be charged at the new Cyd's, to help offset expenses. Suckers.

The Park District, which isn't exactly flush with cash, also receives new revenue.

Most importantly, Cyd's is an established, longstanding Peoria business that will bring people and attention to the park. Cyd's and the Park District also plan to cooperate on Donovan programming.

We already can picture a late-summer, Saturday-evening Cyd's supper on the Donovan patio — the one that overlooks what used to be the ninth green — followed by a stroll across the parking lot to the Northmoor Observatory.

And who knows? Maybe this will lead to similar public-private arrangements at other Park District golf courses. What would you prefer at the Newman clubhouse, microwaved hot dogs or Spotted Cow hamburgers?

The City Council and Park District board still have to sign off on the Cyd's plan. But until and unless some obvious red flag is raised, this seems like a win-win proposition. Kudos to everyone involved.

And kudos to the cosmic forces that enabled the song heard on the way to work, which seems to fit this topic about as well as a restaurant in a dormant building in a sleepy public park.